Like their colleagues at other colleges with tight IT budgets, network administrators at the University of Maine at Farmington were not thrilled to spend $15,000 a year on the software that ran their server. So they designed an alternative program of their own, and they say technology officials on other campuses could do the same.
The technicians adapted open-source software and networking protocols to create their new network-maintenance service, according to the Sun Journal, of Lewiston, Me. "We weren't absolute beginners, but we weren't rocket scientists either," said Aaron Gagnon, one of the software designers. "It's like building a car from scratch." –Brock Read
